During my trip to Paris back in May I was invited by the French Garrison of the 501st to their May 4th event at the LEGO store in Paris.
Up to that point in my trip to France, I’d not seen a whole lot of Star Wars in the country. There were some bits of street art (like those posted below) were the only signs of Star Wars I saw on the streets of Paris.
The other bit of Star Wars I found was in the one comic-book store, Album, where they had some French language versions of Star Wars books and comics. I couldn’t find any Star Wars books of any kind in any of the normal brick and mortar bookstores in France.
(I also found it curious that I, Jedi was split into two books, and Mirax rated mention in the title of the first volume–Moi, Jedi Tome I – Mirax a disparu…)
When I’d emailed back and forth with the members of the French 501st Garrison, I was excited to talk to them about what life as a Star Wars fan was like in France and to find out how it differed with the United States. The first thing I’d noticed is that fine art is what saturates the culture and the advertising in Paris, as far as I saw. I didn’t see a single ad for Iron Man 3 in the city, the only place I saw anything for the film was at the movie theatre where I actually saw the movie. So, popular culture in the United States is a very different thing than in France.
I was excited to see how they celebrated May the Fourth in Paris.
On the Fourth, I ventured to a mall on the outskirts of Paris (which was itself odd since it was in a modern part of a town that doesn’t seem to have many modern parts) where the French Garrison would be holding an event at the LEGO store.
There, I got to chat with Rudy Thomas and the French Garrison CO, Arnaud Miralles, who were both truly nice guys, excellent representatives of the Legion.
They explained to me that Star Wars movies were popular in France, but they hadn’t taken a stranglehold of the culture like they did in the United States. They also told me that in France The Clone Wars was viewed as a show much more for kids and people in the Garrison were cautiously optimistic for Episode VII. I was surprised to see that they only do a troop every month or two, where some Garrisons in the United States seem to be doing troops every week.
Here’s a shot of me (standing, second from the left) with members of the garrison and my travel companion, Patty.
You can see the gallery of images from the event, as well as pictures of the Star Wars street art in Paris in the gallery below.
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